


Daren't Go A-Hunting: A Demon!AU Short

by Providentially_Demonic



Series: Demon Arthur AU [3]
Category: Mystery Skulls Animated
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Demon AU, Demon Arthur, Gen, The Devil and the Dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-08
Updated: 2017-11-08
Packaged: 2019-01-31 03:06:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12666990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Providentially_Demonic/pseuds/Providentially_Demonic
Summary: Originally written for Ectoimp (the creator of the Demon AU) on her birthday.Arthur is feeling a little cooped up in the cabin and Lewis has been hovering (rather literally), so when Lewis is forced to take a rest, Arthur takes the chance to stretch his legs. Unfortunately, there are...thingsin the woods and not all of them are friendly.





	Daren't Go A-Hunting: A Demon!AU Short

Arthur had to get out of the cabin for a bit. Not that it wasn’t lovely (If nothing else, Lewis had _style._ ) but after being trapped in the cave for who knew how long, he wanted the feel the sun on his face and the wind in his hair. Lewis, however, had an annoying tendency of hovering, both literally and figuratively. His protective instincts, while always strong, had seemed to only increase with what had happened to them.

Fortunately, Lewis had tired himself out to the point of having to rest. The first time it had happened it had scared Arthur witless seeing Lewis go intangible and fade until there was nothing left but Lewis’s heart locket. He’d curled around the locket, begging Lewis to come back and not leave him alone until he’d cried himself into an exhausted sleep. When he’d woken, he’d been on the couch with Lewis’s warmth curled around him. Lewis had apologized over and over for scaring him, admitting that when he wore himself out he had to rest or something bad would happen. The look in his eyes when he’d said  _‘something bad’_ had convinced Arthur not to ask. But this time Arthur knew what was going on, and knew Lewis would ‘wake’ up in due time.

But his terror the first time had only increased Lewis’s overprotective streak and he’d been even worse with the hovering. Arthur didn’t deny that he needed Lewis. Lewis was what had kept him sane when the thing in his head had been transforming him. Lewis had helped him; taken care of him, but the mother bear act wore on his nerves after a while. He was used to being independent. He’d never needed anyone to look after him until this had happened and it was— aggravating, to say the least.

He hadn’t snapped at Lewis, but he’d been chafing to get outside for a little while without Lewis and his deadbeats literally hovering over him. He was a grown adult,  _dammit,_ even if his current shape wasn’t one he had chosen. He ignored the little niggling thought that he might need Lewis if something happened. All he wanted to do was get a little sun and fresh air. He thought he remembered the way back to that nice meadow clearing where he had enjoyed his first bask in the sunlight since the cave. Stepping carefully over the mushroom ring, Arthur ventured out of the sheltered little grove that hid the cabin from sight.

He hadn’t gotten very far without realizing he wouldn’t get anywhere at the rate he was going. He still wasn’t used to walking on what was essentially his tiptoes and his damned claws snagged on everything. He remembered that first night in the cabin, when he’d been unable to sleep and, panicky, had looked for Lewis, how he’d shifted to an ungainly but ultimately more stable and faster stride, using his wings as modified legs. It took him an hour and falling over several times to get the wings to do what he wanted them to and allow him some freedom of mobility. He looked up at the sky and realized he couldn’t see the sun to tell how far he’d gone or how long he’d been gone. Clouds had crept in and shrouded the sky.

Well, hell, there went his plans for enjoying the sun. Disgruntled, Arthur turned around and headed back toward the cabin… or at least he thought this was the right way. Yeah, there were the marks of his claws where he’d tripped. So he followed his own trail while the trees grew darker around him and the air smelled of coming rain.

Rain that came before he could find his way back. Yelping at the first drizzle of  _(cold?)_  water down his neck, Arthur ran faster in his awkward, loping gallop. It took him a few minutes to realize he’d lost his own trail. A wind whipped through the branches and the rain bit into his skin like stinging needles of ice. With a yelp, he took shelter in the first place that presented itself; the space where a tree had fallen against another, creating a small but bearably dry place to hide.

Grumbling, he squeezed himself back into the small area, lifting his wings up as much as the space allowed to keep his hair dry. He hoped the rain let up before Lewis ‘woke’ or he’d never hear the end of it. Hopefully the rain hadn’t eradicated every trace of his trail so he could be sure of his way back. If he got lost and Lewis and the deadbeats had to find him, well— he’d never get Lewis to stop smothering him.

The sky grew darker and the rain trickling down the membranes of his wings where they stuck out slightly seemed colder than ever. For a rain in Texas, even this close to the Texas/Louisiana border, it was disturbingly chilly. He hunched down a little further, trying to get all of his wings into the shelter. “Friggin’ rain.”

He watched the rain shaking the leaves and tried to judge how much time had passed by the darkened sky. Unfortunately the thick clouds weren’t any help in that regard. He hunkered down with a muted growl. He wasn’t going to make it back by the time Lewis woke.  _Dammit!_

If it weren’t so cold the melody of the plinking raindrops would be soothing, but Arthur was in no mood to be soothed. He wanted to be back at the cabin where it was dry. He was cold and he was wet and he was stuck in the feeble shelter of a fallen tree. Altogether  _not_  a good start to his first solitary outing.

Arthur growled under his breath, shifting position again. A spiderweb caught on his left wing-talon and he shook it off with a grimace. Was all of nature going to conspire against him today? Not enough that his own body didn’t work the ways he was used to anymore, but no, everything else had to be out to get him.

Arthur closed his eyes and hunched down in a miserable ball of wet skin and troubled thoughts. He could almost hear the creature in his mind. He hadn’t really heard its voice since… well since he had woken from the fog of pain and hallucinations that had been his world after falling off the cliff. But there was an insidious whisper in his head that he should just stay right here and let Lewis get on with whatever it was still holding him to the living world… Not that he had any doubt what that was. Vivi. It had always been Vivi with Lewis from the first moment he had met her.

Vivi had captivated both of them with her outgoing cheer and wit. She was the motivating force behind all their investigations and indisputably the leader of the Mystery Skulls. And she had been the lodestone to which they had both gravitated. It had almost seemed a foregone conclusion that she and Lewis would start dating.

Lewis didn’t need him like he needed Lewis, Arthur knew. For all that he was a man grown, in this form that wasn’t his, he was the next best thing to helpless. He couldn’t manage more than a stumbling walk unless he went down on wingtips and feet, like some sort of animal. Lewis could hide as a normal human with only the addition of a pair of sunglasses, while he— he could _not._  He could never be anything  _like_ normal again.

It hurt.

Maybe he should just stay here in the dark and the cold until this demon he had become simply died and went to feed the creatures of the forest. It would be a fitting end to a monster…

Arthur jolted a little, the fog in his mind lifting just a bit, like a break in the clouds would let sunlight in. He’d had dark thoughts, even wished he’d been the one to die in that cave instead of Lewis, but he wasn’t suicidal. He’d spent too much of his life running from frightening and/or deadly things to just lie down and die. What was wrong with him?

There was a tickling across his skin and he glanced down to see thin strands of spider silk, pale white against his green skin. More festooned the edges of his wings, running from the trees to the upper edges of his wings. He flexed one wing, watching the strands stretch and finally snap. Perfect, he had to have found a nest of spiders to hide in. He lifted his head and came face to mandible with a spider the size of his fist, black and yellow and green legs as long as his forearm, watching him with eight bright gold eyes from its perch in the crux where the two trees met. Arthur yipped and scooted backwards, rain trickling down his back and flared wings.

Given the choice between cold rain and the mother of all daddy-long-legs, Arthur decided soggy was something he could live with. He scuttled free of his meager shelter and left it to the ownership of an arachnid he would be seeing in his nightmares for months. The rain washed away the bits of silk on his skin and no matter how chilly it was, he felt cleaner.

But he was still lost. The rain had washed away any trace of his trail. And he wanted more than ever to get back to the cabin. Even Lewis scolding him for wandering off would be better than this. Lewis…

He wished he had Lewis or one of his deadbeats to guide him back, or just Lewis’s faith in the magic of this stretch of forest. The fairy circle and Lewis carefully leaving out offerings, while all well and good, had done nothing to make Arthur think there was anything more at work than superstition and the biology of mushroom spores.

Lifting his wings above his head as a sort of makeshift umbrella, Arthur squinted into the darkness of the trees, hoping to make out something— anything— that looked even the slightest bit familiar. Nothing.

He had just about resigned himself to spending a cold miserable night out in the wood until Lewis woke and came looking, when he spotted a faint light through the trees ahead. Hope rose in his throat.  _There!_ He must be closer than he thought he was!

Ignoring the rain, he hurried toward the light, toes squelching in the mud. He nearly tripped again and with a curse he shifted back to the awkward, animal-like lope using his wings. He hurried on through the wet and cold, concentrating only on the faint glow ahead and getting back.

Surprisingly, the dim light grew no closer and he thought he should be able to see the cabin by now. Frustration burned in his throat, and he pushed himself to move faster. He just wanted to go back to the cabin!

One of his wing claws snagged on something in the dark and he went sprawling on the ground. His breath escaped in a frustrated sob as he clutched his aching, wrenched wing. “Dammit, I just want to go  _home!”_  Home meant safe and warm and Lewis, and he wanted that like nothing else. Rubbing his abused wing, Arthur started to push himself up onto hands and knees. Something white and red caught his eye and he found himself only inches from one of the red-and-white spotted mushrooms that made up the fairy circle around the cabin. Lifting his head, he saw he was only a few feet from the cabin door.

Scrambling to his feet, Arthur stepped over the fairy ring and hurried to the steps. A faint trail of light wove around the porch posts and darted away into the trees. Arthur blinked and it was gone. He swallowed down a sudden thickness in his throat, remembering Vivi’s tales of fairy lights who led travelers astray. But this one… it— it had led him home. “Thank you,” he whispered, half-believing.

He thought he heard a faint giggle in answer right as the door closed behind him.

Arthur thought he might join Lewis in laying out an offering tonight…  _just_ to be on the safe side.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: The light that led Arthur home was a fairy light, sometimes called a will o’wisp, said to lead travelers astray. 
> 
> The _spider of the whispered thoughts_ comes from my own encounter with a garden spider the size of a small tarantula. It was bright and colorful and creepy as all get out when I ran into a part of its web so it seemed like a good choice. In all honesty, the only thought I had for this story was the moment Arthur stopped thinking of the cabin as someplace he was doomed to have to hide in for the rest of his life and more an actual home, especially with Lewis (and later Vivi and frequent visits from the rest of his loved ones) there.


End file.
